[For complete details of the After Effects CC (12.1) update, due for release in October, see this page.]

A big area of focus for After Effects CC (12.1) is improvements in GPU processing, both for CUDA processing for the GPU acceleration of the ray-traced 3D renderer and for OpenGL features. For details of how After Effects uses CUDA and OpenGL, see this page.

OpenGL features enabled for all Intel GPUs

In previous versions of After Effects, the OpenGL features were enabled on Intel GPUs only if those GPUs were listed in a “whitelist” file (intel_ogl_supported_cards.txt). This was because early generations of Intel GPUs and their drivers had problems with OpenGL features, so we needed to test each individually and only allow specific known-good configurations to work. Recent Intel GPUs and drivers have been of high enough quality that we have removed this check, and there is no longer an intel_ogl_supported_cards.txt file.

In After Effects CS6 (11.0) and CC (12.0), the GPU Information dialog box has a Ray-tracing menu from which the user can choose GPU or CPU. If the installed hardware is not on the list of tested and supported GPUs, the GPU menu item is disabled (grayed out) and below the menu is this text: “GPU not available – incompatible device or display driver”.

In After Effects CC (12.1), we have added a checkbox: “Enable untested, unsupported GPU for CUDA acceleration of ray-traced 3D renderer.”

Enabling this checkbox will do a couple of things:

After Effects will use the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer with any GPU that meets minimum requirements (which include 1GB of VRAM and CUDA 5.0).

The text “GPU not available – incompatible device or display driver” will change to “Unsupported GPU enabled for CUDA acceleration” if the GPU meets the minimum requirements but is not on the whitelist. If the GPU doesn’t meet the minimum requirements, the text remains as the original.

In the CUDA section at the bottom of the GPU Information dialog box, “(unsupported)” is added to the Devices entry if the installed hardware isn’t on the whitelist but is enabled.

When the user enables this preference, a dialog box appears that tells the user that using an untested and unsupported GPU is something that they do at their own risk and that technical support is only provided for supported configurations.